


brightness overcomes shadow

by Saraste



Series: scars of azanulbizar [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Braids, Dwarflings / Pebbles, Ered Luin, F/F, Family, Flower Crowns, Fluff, Post-Battle of Azanulbizar, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63, Summer, fem!nwalin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9520928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: It's the summer after Azanulbizar, Nori's making a flower crown.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Earlier today, I told katajainen I was going to bury myself in fluff, I wrote this.
> 
> The blue cornflowers and red poppies and a bright hot summer day are a memory in my head I associate with family, especially one particularly hot car ride in rural France with katajainen and our parents when we were in our late teens, I think. But it's sort of a perfect summer day memory for me. The image of giggling, running wee things is pretty obvious, and something I strongly associate with summer and green growing things.

Summers are gentle, bright affairs, when they come to the hills of Ered Luin after a green verdant spring, appreciated by Durin’s folk in exile as a gentle spring and a gentle summer mean good crops. Good crops mean full bellies, which are more precious than any riches, especially after… after Azanulbizar. The summer after the last warriors of Azanulbizar have come home is a sombre affair, for too many many voices have been silenced forever. Yet, there is brightness enough in the bubbling laughter of pebbles, in the joyful eyes of parents.

 

Dwalin is sitting beside Nori, watching as their little pebble races around after Ori and Fíli, strides a little uneven still, yet they still keep up. Their pebble reminds Nori of Dwalin in stubbornness.

 

Nori snuggles close to her side, one of Dwalin's arms is wound around her body, keeping her close, keeping her safe. Even if there is no danger here in Ered Luin, no danger lurking in such a bright day save for that of a scraped knee when on of the three inevitably falls over. Yet Dwalin is ever vigilant, cannot shake her training, cannot quench the stabs of dread that plague her when she loses sight of their pebble behind a tree or the tall green grass littered with bright blue cornflowers and flashing red poppies.

 

The grass feels cool where Nori stretches her bare toes over the edge of the blanket, even though the day is brightly hot, making her almost sweat even wearing only a long tunic, same as Dwalin. (For which Nori gives fervent thanks to Mahal, as Dwalin has a rather nice pair of legs, the thought of them and the sight of them stretched out over the blanket make Nori wish for more privacy, a quiet corner of grass just for them and a lot less clothes.) 

 

All the while she’s indulging in that little naughty thought, Nori’s fingers are nimbly braiding a flower crown, for a small or a big head, she has not yet decided. She casts a glance at Dwalin, sitting up straight even if she is leaning a bit against the tree behind them, eyes fixed on their pebble.

 

Their pebble is a silent thing, but for their laughter, saving their words for when they are needed most. In that, they take after Dwalin a bit. In that, they worry Nori quite a bit, as she knows they have not always been so, their pebble used to be a bubbling brook before… before Azanulbizar. Both Nori’s dwarfling and her wife have the shadow of Azanulbizar following them and… and it breaks Nori a little, makes her fingers almost crush the flower-crown she’s been braiding. She looks at Dwalin, adds a few more flowers and binds it into a ring.

 

'Relax, Dwalin,' Nori says, feels her wife relax against her side when the three dwarflings come into sight once more, all giggles and smudged limbs.

 

'Dwalin never relaxes,' their King teases from a few feet away, where he is looking over some reports with Balin. Even when the lady Dís has tasked her brother with the care of her pebble, that does not mean that their King can lay aside his kingly duties, or at least think he can.

 

Nori feels mischievous, feels Dwalin tense under her arm, for it is too easy to resist and Dwalin knows it. 'I do not know about that, my King, I find that ---'

 

Dwalin shuts her up with a kiss, pressing her down onto grass and blanket. Nori is giggling when they come apart, giggles harder when she sees Thorin's face, harder still when she sees Balin's barely suppressed smirk. And oh, Nori is joyous in that moment, for Dwalin's face breaks in a genuine grin and Nori sees in her the dam she fell in love with, the dwarf who didn't quite come back from the fighting. Her heart has ached during the all too long winter, seeing Dwalin struggle with the shadow of Azanulbizar.

 

It has been their pebble, now running towards them with dark hair flying wild behind them, unbound but for the braids marking them as belonging, claiming them as family, even if Nori would have needed them to know their pebble is their pebble, it has been their pebble who has really helped Dwalin heal where Nori has been unable to help.

 

Dwalin feigns to be bowled under the pile of laughing dwarflings, three in total, and the ensuing laughter is the best and brightest thing, brighter than the sun up in the summer blue sky. Brighter than the cornflowers, bright Durin Blue, in the flower crown upon her brow.

 


End file.
